More People Injured in Accidental Falls, Drug Overdoses, U.S. Researchers Say

The rate of people dying from accidental falls and poisonings in the United States sharply increased in recent years, according to a newly released study.

From 1999 to 2005, there was an 11-percent increase in the total number of unintentional injury deaths, with nearly 90 percent of the cases related to poisonings in people between the ages of 15 and 64 and falls by people age 45 and older. During that time, there were about 11,000 more accidental poisonings and about 6,000 fatal falls, researchers said.

While the reason for the increase in falls among middle aged and older Americans remains a bit of a mystery to the research team led by Johns Hopkins University, the dramatic boost in accidental poisonings is being chalked up to rising misuse and abuse of prescription drugs, said study co-author Susan P. Baker, according to an MSNBC.com report.

The study is profiled on the website of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and will be published in the September print edition of the journal.

Use of Antidepressants, Other Drugs Surges

The abuse of antidepressants has greatly increased in the past decade, while the rates of abuse of all types of prescription drugs nearly doubled from 2000 to 20007, officials said.

Researchers said the increases may because patients assume that if a drug is prescribed to them by a physician, that means it is safe, which of course is not true. Still others patients may knowingly abuse drugs by taking more than the prescribed amount or using prescriptions for drugs given to other patients. Sharing prescriptions and otherwise abusing medications is a particularly bad problem for teens and adolescents, researchers said.

Race, Gender Play Parts in Abuse Rates

The study found a big difference in the rates of death associated with falls and prescription drug poisonings depending on the race and gender of the patient.

The death rate from falls increased 38 percent for white men and 48 percent for white women 65 and older. It remained about the same for older blacks of either sex, officials said.

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